Arguably the most gifted Hungarian filmmaker of his generation, István Szõts has been compared by critics to Ford, Vigo and Renoir. His forgotten masterpiece, People of the Mountains, is the story of a woodcutter and his family who live high in mountains of Transylvania. Forced out of their home, they are enticed into working for the very company that ejected them, only for their lives to begin to unravel one tragic misfortune after another.

Shot almost entirely on location (in the harshest conditions imaginable), using mostly non-professional actors, a devotion to realism and the details of daily life, and an indictment of the prevailing conditions, this was a groundbreaking film. Szõts auspicious debut was, however, refused a distribution license by Nazi minister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels and condemned as 'Communist propaganda'. In spite of this, the film went onto to win a major prize at the 1942 Venice Film Festival and later cited as an early model for the post-war Italian Neorealism movement, praised by Vittorio De Sica and Cesare Zavattini among others. A powerful, elemental vision suffused with poetic lyricism and a romantic anti-capitalist zeal, People of the Mountains is the jewel of Hungarian cinema of the period.

SPECIAL FEATURES
People of the Mountains (1942) - presented from a brand new 2K digital restoration of the film from original nitrate image and sound negatives, supervised by the Hungarian National Digital Archive.
Original Hungarian soundtrack in mono audio.
New and improved English subtitle translation.
Booklet featuring a new essay by author and Hungarian cinema expert John Cunningham

And here's an extract from a piece I wrote for the Journal of Film Preservation about the Hungarian Digital Archive project in general:

One of the more recent MaNDA DVDs, István Szőts’ Men in the Alps (Emberek a havason, 1942) – other English versions replace “Men” with “People”, “in” with “of” and/or “Alps” with “Mountains” - offers a model example of presentation standards. The film has been largely neglected internationally since its 1942 Venice Film Festival screening made a deep impression on future Italian neorealists, but it’s retained a substantial reputation at home, to the point of being ranked fourth on the ‘Budapest 12’ critics’ poll conducted by Hungarian critics in 2000. (Jancsó’s The Round-Up/Szegénylegények, 1965, came first – this is as yet unreleased by MaNDA on DVD but a new restoration premiered at Cannes 2015). The title is presented in Hungarian on the menu, but the viewing options are bilingual, and the main feature comes with English subtitles.

The film is mostly set in a remote Transylvanian community into which a Hungarian woodcutter has resettled with his family in the hope of a better life than the one that he has endured thus far. The first half is undoubtedly what gives the film its lasting reputation, as its rhapsodically lyrical portrait of a long-vanished way of life, where ancient pagan rituals hold as much sway as Christianity, gives way to the encroachment of industrialisation and the cataclysmic impact that it has on traditional professions and crafts. The piling up of tragedy upon tragedy in the second half teeters on the edge of melodrama, but it’s easy to see why the French critic Philippe Haudiquet compared Szőts with Dovzhenko, Ford and Renoir. Sadly, Szőts only made one more feature before joining a creative exodus of talented Hungarians in 1956 following the Soviet invasion.

"A masterpiece... It looks magnificent, with a rare quality of light that simply glows in this new restoration. It is, then, an astonishing accomplishment. It’s also a happy reminder of how much wonderful cinema there remains for us all to discover."

James Oliver raves about PEOPLE OF THE MOUNTAINS at MovieMail (and available at just £8.99!)

"István Szöts’s stark, startling slab of rural realism People of the Mountains. Now given a digital restoration from the original nitrate print, it’s a true discovery. Earthy and ahead of its time, this poetic defence of unconsidered lives still bristles with feeling."